


The Salvation of Saint-14 (Destinytober 2020)

by NetRaptor



Series: Destiny and Destiny 2 stories [35]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 15,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26800870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NetRaptor/pseuds/NetRaptor
Summary: Ambrose is a young Guardian who is terrified of the pyramids that lurk at the outskirts of the solar system. He is also unwilling to go back to Mercury and delve into the Infinite Forest, where Saint-14 died. But when Ikora personally sends him back, Ambrose has no choice but to face his own fears and venture down the Corridors of Time in search of the timeline where Saint-14 died. (Illustrated)
Series: Destiny and Destiny 2 stories [35]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1072209
Comments: 30
Kudos: 18





	1. Guardian

Ambrose first saw the pyramids when patrolling Neptune.

As he orbited the brilliant blue and white planet, gravity waves rippled through him and his ship, making his stomach roll. “Peach, what is causing this?”

His Ghost floated beside him, acting as copilot, her eye fixed on the instruments. “I can't say for certain. It's not Neptune.” Her eye closed as another wave dragged at them. “Oooh it hurts my Light.”

Ambrose gasped as the wave passed. “It's giving me … flashbacks. I keep thinking I'm on another ship, and the waves are going to tear me apart.”

Peach gave him a concerned look. Ambrose was Awoken, with dark hair like feathers that tumbled down the side of his face. A pattern of glowing dots marked the skin around his green eyes.

“You weren't always Awoken,” Peach said softly.

Ambrose watched Neptune slide by below, it's upper atmosphere churned into swirling white bands. “You are correct. Once I was human. I nearly remember it … and the kugelblitz.” Another gravity wave struck and the jumpship groaned. Ambrose did, too. “I cannot keep doing this. I'm afraid I'm going to panic quite badly.”

“We’ll finish our pass and set course for Earth,” Peach said, communicating with the computer. Then she looked up and made a beeping cry.

Creeping out from behind Neptune was a pyramid. It was jet black, with green lights burning along its base, signifying a ship of some kind. It brought with it a heaviness, as if it were the most dense object in the universe. Its movement pushed gravity outward in waves like a ship in a calm sea.

Ambrose went rigid, gripping the flight yoke, his breathing turning fast and shallow. In his mind, he was experiencing the blast of Light and Darkness that had unraveled him, stretched him out and out, three dimensions, then two, then one, impossibly thin and quiet and still, in silence deeper than death.

“Change course,” he whispered. “Now! Peach! Now!”

The Ghost completed her operations on the ship’s computer within a second. They wheeled away from Neptune, away from the lurking menace of the alien pyramid and its rippling gravity. Ambrose activated the NLS drive, and they leaped to the safety of near-lightspeed. They left the lurking menace of the pyramid far, far behind, at the edge of the solar system … but it would catch up, eventually.


	2. Ghost

Peach flew at Ambrose’s shoulder as he made his way through the Tower. First he reported to Commander Zavala about the pyramids. Then he was sent to Ikora Rey, who sent him to the Consensus heads. It seemed like they'd been everywhere in the Tower since arriving back on Earth.

Peach wore a steel shell studded with brass rivets and a couple of spikes. She wanted to look tough. All those other Ghosts had wanted Guardians, but not her. She had been perfectly happy being a single Ghost. After all, there were plenty of adventures to be had out in the wilds, exploring and mapping the planets. And who said Ghosts needed Guardians, anyway? It wasn’t like the Traveler had given her a prime directive. It had chucked her out into the world without a word, leaving her to fend for herself. And so she had, for centuries.

Then she had found Ambrose.

She glanced at him now, taking in his handsome face with its delicate features, beautiful and elf-like, except for the beard he wore along his jawline. Ambrose had resurrected with the muscle of a trained boxer, and wore one of the largest sizes of Hunter armor. He retained the muscle memory of how to use a sword, and carried one at his hip at all times. Peach had seen him cut through an entire pack of Fallen that had swarmed him, sword flashing like lightning among their crawling bodies.

_I don't need you_ , she thought, watching him stop and nod courteously as another Guardian slipped by on a narrow walkway. _I never wanted a Guardian. I was happy being alone. But I made the choice to resurrect you, mostly so your spark would shut up._

Ambrose interrupted her thoughts by reaching up to stroke her shell. His touch was warm and gentle, even though his fingers were strong enough to crush her like a tin can. He smiled at her, then composed himself and opened a door leading to the Future War Cult’s chambers.

_No, I don't need you_ , Peach thought, following alongside. _But I chose you. And that made all the difference._

__


	3. Off-duty

On Ambrose’s days off, he liked to leave the City and visit particular favorite spots in the surrounding mountains. Today, he packed a lunch and hiked several miles into the mountains where a waterfall plunged into a small grotto. There it was damp and mossy, the stones softened by deep, feathery ferns. 

Ambrose liked to go there with Charon whenever she returned to the City. But it was late summer, and she wouldn't return until the snow drove her in. She was out in the wilds somewhere, shepherding a pack of Ghosts around, helping them find their Guardians. Peach had been one of them. 

Now the Hunter sat on his cloak, leaned against a rock, and ate his lunch, watching the water fall from the cliff top in a white plume, splashing into a clear green pool where trout lurked, hiding beneath the turbulence.

“You know why I took the Neptune patrol?” he said suddenly to his Ghost.

“Why?” Peach said, although she knew why. She had been there when it happened.

“To escape Mercury,” Ambrose said, barely audible over the falling water. “It wasn't enough that we have been at Osiris's beck and call, managing his Infinite Forest experiments. It was that dead Titan.”

Peach nodded.

Ambrose finished his first sandwich and unwrapped the second. “I didn't know who Saint-14 was. Poor chap died fighting Vex, trying to find Osiris. Looked him up when we got home. Hero seven ways from Sunday. And there he was, dead, in that strange Vex tomb.” He lifted the shotgun from his back, where he’d carried it ever since finding it beside the cairn. He rested it across his knees and ran his fingertips along the barrel, the spike at the end for close quarters combat. It was old and tarnished, the stock dented where it had been used as a club.

“And that message,” he muttered, more to himself than his Ghost. “About the one who found this weapon was the one who had given it.” He raised his head to look at Peach, shaking back his hair. “You know how it frightened me. There's no shame in admitting it to you.”

Peach nodded again. “I was unnerved, myself. I dislike time travel nonsense.”

Ambrose set the shotgun aside and set to work on his second sandwich. “Am I fated to meet a dead Titan before his death?”

“Maybe,” Peach said. “You should have listened to me and left that Light trail alone.”

“Perhaps I should have,” said Ambrose. “But if I listened to you, I would never leave the Tower.”

Peach emoted a smile as he grinned at her.

Ambrose was silent for a while as he ate. Then he said, “And yet, a new threat approaches. Everywhere I turn, there are enemies. Perhaps we need a hero from the old stories to walk among us once more.”

“And maybe you should stop worrying about it,” Peach said. “What will happen will happen. We can only choose our reaction to these things.”

“True,” Ambrose replied. He gazed at the waterfall for a while, resting his mind. Then he plucked a fern frond and tickled Peach with it. “Time to go home, little light.”


	4. Jumpship

On the outside, Ambrose’s jumpship was a skirmish-class fighter with sleek lines and two Nova-class engines. On the inside, she was a piece of junk that never ran right. The long jump to and from Neptune had burned straight through the jump drive’s wiring, owing to insulation Ambrose hadn't realized was missing.

He was shoulder deep in the port engine, aiding Amanda Holliday, when a voice said, “Guardian Ambrose?”

He flicked his hair out of his eyes and looked up. “Sorry?”

Ikora Rey stood there in her immaculate purple robes. “I would like to speak to you, please.”

Ambrose emerged from the engine, holding back a groan. “You’ll have to excuse the state of my clothes, commander,” he said, wiping grease off his hands with a rag. “I was not expecting an audience.”

Ikora nodded. He approached, and she lowered her voice. “I'm sending you back to Mercury.”

Ambrose stood still, resisting the childish urge to whine that he was sick of the barren desert planet. It was beneath a Guardian to complain in front of a commanding officer. But he did allow himself a deep sigh.

Ikora must have noticed. She smiled a little. “I know you've been there a lot lately. But this time, Osiris requested you personally.”

Ambrose blinked. “He did, ma’am?”

“Yes. He's seen the way you traverse the Infinite Forest and he has a similar mission for you.”

“Oh good!” Peach chirped, popping into sight in a swirl of blue sparks. “I love exploring the Infinite Forest! We found the crypt of Saint-14 in there.”

“Exactly,” said Ikora. “I believe that's what Osiris wishes to speak to you about.”

Ambrose saluted. “Yes, ma’am. I'll schedule my departure as soon as my jump drive is functional.”

Ikora nodded and walked away. Once she was out of earshot, Ambrose grumbled, “I thought you disliked time travel nonsense.”

“I do,” Peach said. “But the Infinite Forest is a giant simulation, and it's so fascinating. Besides, Osiris asked for you by name? That's a great honor.”

Ambrose didn't reply as he returned to helping Amanda. He didn't want to admit how the endless Vex realm inside Mercury touched off that primal fear embedded in his soul. His unmaking and rebirth as an Awoken was his only pre-Guardian memory, possibly because the terror had been woven into his very cells. Besides, he didn't care for Osiris. The man had been exiled from Vanguard leadership because of his obsession with the time traveling robots. To Ambrose, Osiris had seemed like an absent-minded genius too blinded by his own brilliance to see anyone else.

It took the rest of the day to get the jump ship working. Ambrose paid Holliday a generous bonus on top of her usual fee in thanks. 

As night fell on Earth, the Hunter winged his way toward the sun, bound for Mercury.


	5. Cabal

Mercury looked the same from orbit, but flying in was a different matter. As Ambrose flew toward the plateau where the Lighthouse stood, the landscape seemed to change in long ripples. First was barren desert--then fields of golden grass with tall fungus trees, their crimson branches looping toward the sky. Beyond that, more desert.

“Are you seeing this, too?” Ambrose said, rubbing his eyes. “Or is my lack of sleep catching up with me?”

“It's not just you,” Peach said, blinking through her various filters. “And it's not a simulation. That's a time distortion. A real one. What is happening down there?”

They flew down and landed, cautiously, behind the Lighthouse. As Ambrose disembarked into the burning sunlight, he was disconcerted to see the sky split into strips--some the dusty orange sky of modern Mercury, and others the pale blue of Mercury’s past. The air was disturbed, too--a swirling breeze of heat and coolness that played havoc with his suit’s environment sensors.

“Incoming transmission,” Peach announced. “It's Osiris.”

“Open the channel,” Ambrose replied.

The old warlock’s voice spoke over Ambrose’s helmet radio. “Guardian Ambrose! Thanks for coming. Please transmat to the following coordinates and meet me at the Sundial.”

“Affirmative,” Ambrose replied. As the channel clicked off, he added to Peach, “Sundial?”

“Somehow,” Peach replied, “I doubt we’re talking about a solar clock.”

Ambrose cautiously drew Perfect Paradox and ratcheted a shell into the chamber. “Ready.”

Peach worked the transmat.

The Hunter teleported from the Lighthouse to a location a few miles away. He dropped to the ground in a swirl of transmat light in the middle of a fierce firefight between a pack of Cabal and a regiment of Vex. Neither the aliens or robots noticed him appear, but several bullets pinged off the rock next to him. Ambrose dove behind the base of a pillar and tried to circle the battle. In the distance, he could see a structure of some kind beneath a shimmering energy shield. The Vex and Cabal appeared to be fighting over it.

Ambrose drove his knife into a Harpy that was busy burning through a Cabal legionnaire’s breastplate with its laser. The legionnaire, far from being grateful, fired its slug rifle point-blank, tearing through Ambrose’s left arm. Snarling, Ambrose fired Perfect Paradox into the alien’s helmet. The shotgun tore through the helmet and shattered the alien’s skull, blowing black oil out the back. The alien collapsed.

The Hunter dashed for cover behind a ruined wall, favoring his mutilated arm. His Ghost appeared and played a healing beam across it. “Boy, he really got you.”

“No, really?” Ambrose said through his teeth. “I could have sworn it was only a flesh wound.”

“You’re arm’s almost off,” Peach began, then caught his tone. “Wait, we’re not doing Monty Python right now.”

Ambrose flashed her a grin through his faceplate. Her healing beam knitted his arm back together, and he flexed his hand. “Great. Thank you, Ghost Peach. Let’s find Osiris.”


	6. Solar/arc/void

Ambrose arrived, panting, at the structure beneath the energy shield. He pushed against it experimentally, because sometimes these shields were keyed to let one race through, but not another. To his relief, he passed through without a problem.

Inside the shield was an oasis of silence, cut off from the battling aliens outside. Osiris stood alone, talking to his Ghost, Sagira. Osiris wore exotic-looking warlock robes with long feathers trailing from his shoulders, a golden torc around his neck, and a falcon-head helmet. He wore a mask over his nose and mouth to keep out Mercury’s dust. Above it, his eyes peered out from a deep nest of folds and wrinkles, much weathered from the hot, close sun.

But the man’s presence was the unnerving part. Intangible energy radiated from him, as if he were a bolt of lightning in human form. Ambrose was careful to salute from a safe distance, showing respect, until Osiris beckoned him closer. Osiris’s Ghost had named him after the Egyptian god of life and death, and her hubris had paid off. He, in turn, had named her Sagira, meaning //little one. 

“Welcome, Guardian,” Osiris said, extending a hand. 

Ambrose shook it, wincing at the burn of the man’s Solar Light. “Greetings, Osiris. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Osiris turned and gestured to the machine behind him. It was a tower of machinery about twenty feet high with three arms ending in sharp vertical points. “This is the Sundial, my own creation. It opens the Corridors of Time, allowing true passage through time. The Infinite Forest is only a simulation, as you know.”

“Yes?” Ambrose said, mystified. “Isn’t that a dangerous machine to build?”

“Well, yes,” Osiris replied, glancing at his Ghost in her ornamental shell. “The Cabal found it and have been wreaking havoc with the timelines. But I have other teams of Guardians dealing with it. I needed you for another purpose. Ah, your shotgun. May I look at it?”

Ambrose handed the warlock Perfect Paradox. Osiris lifted it to his shoulder to peer down the sights, then inspected the barrel. His fingers brushed the XIV inscription. “The weapon of my old friend, Saint-14.” He held the shotgun for a moment, as if trying to sense something from it. “You detected his Light and found his crypt in the Infinite Forest. I built the Sundial to try to find the point of his death, to rescue him. And … I have failed. My reflections have walked the Corridors of Time for centuries of accumulated time. None of us can find that point. But you … you have this connection with him. I know the way to the point when he first arrived on Mercury. I want you to assist him there. Establish further connection. See if that changes things.”

“You want me to go back in time and meet Saint-14?” said Ambrose, eyes widening. “Sir, are you certain I’m the proper Guardian for such a task?”

Osiris’s eyes narrowed above his mask. “You traced him on your own, without any assistance from me. You made the connection yourself. I have lost hope of finding my old friend or saving him. But you … you’ve inserted yourself into the timelines. Even now, you carry the threads of them about you, tangled in your own.”

Ambrose glanced at his arms, expecting to see timelines like cobwebs trailing from his limbs.

Osiris gestured to the Sundial. “I will activate it for you. When you enter the Corridors, do not be afraid. The path will be clearly marked. The Axis Vex may try to stop you … pay them no heed.”

“Axis Vex?” Ambrose exclaimed. “Aren’t they the highest tier of their command?”

Osiris frowned at him. “Yes. How do you know such things?”

“I study our enemies,” Ambrose replied. “Warlocks aren’t the only ones with an education.”

Osiris’s frown changed to a grin. “I knew you were the right Guardian for this task. Now, go, swiftly. The currents of time are in constant flux because of the Red Legion’s tampering. The Corridors may shift again, and you don’t want to become trapped inside.”

“Yes, all right,” Ambrose said. “But what--”

Osiris touched the machine. The arms began to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Arc energy built inside the shielded sphere. Outside, the desert of Mercury shifted to the grassy Mercury and back, flickering with every sweep of the Sundial’s arms. Then, suddenly, it was gone, vanished into whiteness. With another sweep, the Sundial vanished, too. Ambrose was standing in the chrome-whiteness of the Corridors of Time.


	7. Dance party

"Where's Ambrose?" said Muriel.

The sun was setting, and the cool evening breeze was starting to make headway against the blazing summer heat that had toasted the Tower Walk all day. Everywhere hung paper lanterns and garlands to celebrate the Solstice of Heroes. Down in the square, the little tables and chairs had been cleared away. A set of amplifiers the size of refrigerators had been set up, and dance music was booming. The square was filled with Guardians dancing in pairs or alone. Light constructs flashed like neon above the heads of the crowd.

Muriel scanned the crowd again. "I don't see him anywhere. Isn't he here?"

"Oh, lighten up, mother," called Nathan, another of the Hunters on her fireteam. "He's probably off on another of those solo patrols he loves." The human proceeded to put on a show, breakdancing, spinning on his back, whirling on his hands, gyrating with expert control. Bystanders clapped.

Muriel had taken off her Titan armor, but her height still betrayed her class. She was tall even for an Awoken. She knew she ought to be enjoying herself, but something gnawed at the back of her mind. Ambrose should be here. He'd never missed a Solstice dance.

Ariana, the team's warlock, drifted out of the crowd, floating a foot above the ground with her robes billowing around her. She'd made a summer set out of tule and satin, low-cut across her breasts, and turned every head in the vicinity. She utterly ignored Nathan, who stared so hard, he lost his place in his dance and smacked into a lamp post.

"What's the matter?" Ariana asked, tucking a lock of hair back into her immaculate braids. She was Awoken, too, with the otherworldly perfection of her race. She played it to its fullest at events like this. Mostly to torment Nathan.

"Ambrose never showed," Muriel said, retreating from the booming music so they could talk without shouting. "He never misses this. Something's wrong."

Ariana summoned her Ghost, an oversized one she had named Biff. "Find Ambrose, will you?"

Biff opened his shell and sent out a pulse of Light. After a moment he closed himself back up. "I'm not detecting Peach anywhere in the Tower, Guardian." He looked Ariana up and down approvingly.

"Ambrose is right over there," Ariana said, pointing. "Look. Isn't that him?"

A Hunter stood apart from the crowd, flipping a knife made of Light, almost nervously. He still wore his combat armor.

"Oh," Muriel said in relief. "There he is. His Ghost must have her tag masked." She walked up to him. "Hey Ambrose!"

Her hand passed through the Hunter's shoulder. He turned his head and looked at her, his green eyes startled. Then he faded away like a phantom.

Muriel stood there, hand uplifted, staring at the spot where he had been, her heart pounding in her throat.

"Something's wrong," she whispered.


	8. Armoring up

“You know that quote?” Ambrose said to Peach. “For now we see in a glass, darkly, but then we will see face to face? This place is the dark glass.”

Everything in the Corridors of Time was monochrome. And really, there was only one corridor--a short walk across a featureless white place to a door in the distance. The door was crowned by arches of shattered metal--some kind of ice-cold material, anyway. The white floor reflected it like glass, creating symmetrical diamonds across the horizon.

The ground reflected Ambrose’s feet, but not his face. He bent close and peered into it, but his face stayed a misty, hazy blur.

And his voice echoed. Any sound in this place seemed to replay itself out into the vastness of eternity.

Ambrose crossed through the doorway. Here was a courtyard with a huge tree in the center. It grew out of a chunk of land peeled from reality, roots and rocks floating around it. Everything was gray. No color anywhere. Triangular doors ringed the courtyard, each marked by a pillar with a symbol etched on it. 

Out of all the doorways, only one was open. Ambrose passed through into an identical white space with a door in the distance. 

Through the door was a courtyard filled with doors. 

Only one was open.

Ambrose walked and walked, passing through many courtyards. Only the symbol marking the open doorway changed, assuring him he wasn't traveling in circles. Even stranger was the sensation of traveling through himself. He seemed to sense his own timeline, streaming ahead and behind like a long tunnel of motion blur. There were bumps and gaps in it that he didn't care to examine. Looking over his shoulder, there was a vast mark like an exploding star where he had been remade as an Awoken. With a shudder he turned his back on it.

As he entered the sixth courtyard, something scurried to one side. Ambrose flinched and whipped out his shotgun. It was a single Vex goblin, a humanoid robot with a fan-shaped head and a single red eye. It had been crouched over something beneath the courtyard’s central tree, but at the Guardian’s approach, it darted away. As Ambrose watched, it melted through a closed doorway and was gone.

“That was creepy,” Peach murmured in his head. “I don't like this place.”

“Understatement of the decade,” Ambrose agreed. He picked his way toward the object the goblin had left behind.

Lying on the monochrome grass was the skeleton of a Guardian, long dead. It had been a Hunter, too, but its armor was better quality than anything Ambrose owned. He knelt beside the corpse and searched it for identification. There was none, and no Ghost to be found.

“Poor chap,” Ambrose murmured, looking at the skull, turned hopelessly to one side, as if peering out the gate for help that would never come. “Reached the end of his own timeline in this place. Peach, do you have the space to store him and his gear?”

“I think so,” she replied, popping into existence and scanning the corpse from head to foot. “Would you like to keep the armor? I have to store it separately, anyway.”

Ambrose eyed the chestpiece. “I don’t suppose he needs it, anymore. What is this, anyway? I’ve never seen its like.” It was strips of interwoven mail, crowned by an outer vest worked with a Chinese dragon’s head and claws.

“It’s marked as the Dragon’s Shadow,” Peach said softly. “There’s a lot of Light worked into it. We’re talking almost five hundred lux, here.”

Ambrose hesitated, glancing at the skull. “No hard feelings, sir, but I need this more than you do.” He carefully unstrapped the chestplate and shook the dry, brittle bones out of it. It made his skin creep to put it on, but Guardians had to get used to wearing secondhand gear. He had to let out the buckles to fit into it, but once it was on, it felt like a second skin. The layers of mail slid across each other to allow maximum flexibility.

“Thank you, sir,” he said to the skeleton. “We’ll make sure you get a decent burial with the other dead Guardians.” He watched Peach transmat the corpse into her memory, making sure she didn’t miss any of it.

Reality rippled. None of the doors opened, but suddenly they were all open. Through them came the Axis Vex, all in silver in the monochrome light. All of them trained their weapons on Ambrose.

The fallen Guardian had been a trap.


	9. Defend

Ambrose dodged through the triangular doorway, his cloak smoking from the energy blasts of the Axis Vex. They poured after him, robots moving with mechanical precision, firing their weapons in wave after wave. The Hunter had felled many of them, but his shotgun was out of ammo and there was no time to reload. Instead, he fled deeper into the Corridors of Time, his footsteps echoing into eternity.

“Shouldn’t we be close to finding Saint-14?” he panted to his Ghost. “If that corpse back there was him, then we have problems.”

“That was a dead Hunter,” Peach replied. “Saint-14 is a Titan. Also, my scans don’t work in this place. My Light pulse just goes out into infinity and never comes back.”

“I can’t fight the Vex here,” Ambrose said through his teeth, running toward the next doorway. “This is their ground. I could fight for a thousand years and never defeat them.”

“Then let’s find a better vantagepoint,” Peach said. “We might be able to--oh.”

There was no courtyard through the next door. Instead, they emerged into the blazing sunlight of Mercury’s daytime. The shock of seeing color again was almost as welcome as the heat. For a confused moment, as Ambrose’s boots crunched in dry grass, he wondered if they had emerged on the correct planet at all.

Then a bullet zinged past his head, and Ambrose dove for cover behind the nearest stone pillar. Pillar? Yes, some kind of Vex construct, with walls rising fifteen feet high, built of yellow stone, roofless. He glanced at the sky and was shocked to see clouds floating against a pale blue firmament. “Peach, where are we?”

“Mercury, I think,” she replied. “We seem to have journeyed back in time to before Mercury’s terraforming was completely destroyed. This looks like Mercury during the Dark Ages.”

Another bullet tore a large chip out of the stone.

Ambrose ducked. “Who is shooting?”

“That would be a Fallen wire rifle. There’s rather a large number of Fallen on the other side of these ruins. I think there’s--Wait. I’m picking up a transmission on an old emergency band.”

A new voice crackled through Ambrose’s helmet radio. “...repeat, this is Saint-14. Zephyr Station is lost. The Fallen have destroyed everything.”

Ambrose leaped to his feet in sudden hope. “Saint-14! I’m a Guardian and I’m coming to help you!”

“Who is this?” Saint exclaimed. “No, no, save yourself! I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”

Ambrose pelted through the ruins, stuffing shotgun shells into Perfect Paradox as he ran. “It worked, Peach! I can’t believe it worked! Osiris was right!”

“I think it’s that shotgun,” Peach said. “It affected the timeline as we were traveling. I could feel those corridors opening ahead of us. It’s like it was trying to get back to--” She broke off in an incoherent cry.

They had rounded a corner and blundered into what had once been a human camp. Tarps had been stretched across the tops of the ruins to create sunshades, and water collectors were still spread out along the perimeter of the walls. Inside were generators, computers, electrical wires and equipment, obviously a communications hub. But it was filled with bodies. 

Human bodies were sprawled everywhere, blood splattering the walls and equipment. Many still had spears or daggers sticking out of their torsos. Some of the corpses had been mangled as if the Fallen had been eating them. Ambrose stood speechless for three horrified seconds. Then he ran onward. “Saint, are any survivors with you?”

“Negative,” came the Exo’s Russian-tinged voice. “The Fallen tracked us from the Cosmodrome. We came to Mercury to start a new life. Instead, we found nothing but death.”

“Peach, scan for survivors,” Ambrose said, peering down other passages among the ruins that had been converted to living quarters.

Saint-14’s voice rose on a note of grief. “There are no survivors, Guardian! None! I have failed.”

Peach said in an undertone, “I'm not detecting any life signs, Ambrose.”

He halted beside a wall where a bloody handprint had smeared along its length. Ferocious, helpless rage grew inside him. The Fallen had butchered this poor settlement, and for what? To try to impress the Traveler?

Ambrose turned a corner and left the ruins behind. He had emerged high on a hillside. Below, in a little valley, stood a single Titan beneath the violet bubble of a Ward of Dawn. He was surrounded by Fallen, shanks, Servitors, and a walker, all raining fiery death down on that shield. As Ambrose looked, Saint-14 collapsed, supporting the shield with one hand, but holding his side with the other. He couldn't hold out much longer. By the looks of Zephyr Station, maybe he didn't want to.

Ambrose drew on Void Light to wrap himself in shadows. He seemed to disappear from sight.

“Peach,” he muttered, “let's defend Saint-14.”


	10. Fallen

The Fallen had hunted and destroyed the fleeing humans, tracking them to Mercury to slay them all. Only one remained to give them trouble--a single Guardian. He was wounded and barely able to keep his shield up. Even now, it had begun to flicker under the barrage of their attacks. His last stand would soon end, and there would be no one to remember his deeds among his puny race.

But something began to go wrong on the battlefield. A Dreg collapsed, its throat cut. A Vandal gasped out a warning as a knife blade emerged from its ribcage, stabbed from behind. The Fallen spun about, seeking their foe. There had to be another human. They could smell it. But where was it? It was everywhere and nowhere, moving among their ranks in silence, stabbing with deadly accuracy.

They signaled their walker, and it laid down suppression fire, blanketing the battleground in bullets and explosions. Another Guardian emerged from beneath its camouflage and sought shelter inside the other Guardian’s shield. The Fallen snarled in hatred and promised him death. He and his Titan companion would bleed and die in the dust of Mercury, and their Ghosts would be crushed and spread to the four winds.

At least, that’s what the Fallen promised. They could not always follow through on these promises.

* * *

“You are very strong,” Saint-14 panted as Ambrose skidded into the shelter of the Ward of Dawn. “But what has that strength gotten you?”

Saint-14 was a run-of-the-mill Titan in armor that had been outdated a century ago. Of course, this was the past, so maybe it was the best available. Ambrose had read that Saint-14’s armor had been covered in ribbons, but this version had none. He also had no weapons. A shotgun lay outside the Ward, its barrel bent, the butt splintered. Blood ran down the Titan’s side, leaking from a stab wound under his breastplate. If his Ghost hadn't healed it, that meant it was either dead or too exhausted to help.

“Can you hold out?” Ambrose asked him, reloading his own shotgun. “There's a few more than I was expecting to encounter.”

“I can hold,” Saint replied. His voice was bitter. “But it means nothing. Everyone is dead. Wish you had come sooner.”

Ambrose had no answer for that. He wrapped himself in void light again and slipped out of the bubble. He drove his knife into a Vandal that had crept too close to the shield, then used his shotgun on a cluster of shanks, exploding them into metal confetti. Then he dashed across the field to deal with a Servitor that was empowering a group of Dregs with ether. All the while, he kept an eye on that walker. A prime Servitor had flown up and was pouring ether into it, acting as a shield that would repel projectiles.

This would be a long, difficult fight.


	11. Hope

The Fallen lay dead around the two Guardians. The walker had exploded into pieces, the prime Servitor only a smoking husk. Saint-14 and Ambrose sat side by side on the ruins of a wall, resting, letting their Ghosts heal them. Ambrose pulled off his helmet and raked his fingers through his sweaty hair. The hot wind of Mercury would suck every particle of moisture from it within two minutes.

Saint-14 held his Ghost in both hands, stroking the shell and talking softly in Russian. The Ghost replied in the same language, his voice weary. After a while, Saint lifted the Ghost into the air. It opened its shell and pulsed Light into its Guardian, mending the awful stab wound at last.

“What brought you here?” Ambrose asked, studying the Titan. After hearing so many legends of this man, it was a surreal experience to see him sitting there in the flesh, battle-weary, weighed down by discouragement.

Saint lifted a hand. “We decide to escape the Warlords, come to Mercury. Was supposed to be a garden world. We scrape together parts for ship, then find Vex already here. They have _murdered_ this planet.” He slapped his knee for emphasis. “We build Zephyr Station anyway. Then the Fallen, House of Rain, track us here. I hold them off for many days, but …” He rose to his feet abruptly. “My friends,” he said with a catch in his voice. “They all dead. I must bury them. Come. Help.”

Ambrose found himself being handed a shovel and working alongside Saint-14 to dig grave after grave in Mercury’s hard, rocky soil. Saint carried bodies out of the station and laid them in rows, folding the hands on their chests. He spoke the name of each man, woman, or child, often pausing to kneel over them and whisper prayers.

“You’re religious?” Ambrose panted, pausing to rest.

Saint nodded. “I am servant of Jesus Christ. You know this name, yes? Jesus is Light of the world. Is why I take the name Saint, fight for the Light. He has never let me down, but I let him down very badly.” He gestured to the corpses. “I let everyone down.” He stood with his head bowed and shoulders slumped for a long moment. “I can not do this anymore. I’ve buried everyone I’ve ever met. The Traveler bring only war and death.”

Peach nudged Ambrose’s mind. “Can I show him the Last City from our time?”

“Is that a good idea?” Ambrose thought. “What if we change history?”

“He needs some hope,” Peach replied. “Even his Ghost is despairing.”

“Very well,” Ambrose thought. “Be careful what you say.” He held out a hand to summon Peach. “My Ghost wants to tell you something.”

Saint wearily reached up and pulled off his own helmet. Beneath, he was an Exo with a kindly face, painted white with glowing blue eyes. “Speak, then, little Light. It can not hurt.”

“We came from a different time,” Peach said, gazing earnestly at Saint. “It’s why we didn’t get here sooner. We had to navigate the Corridors of Time and it wasn’t easy. So … so let me show you what it’s like in our time.” She projected a hologram across the entire area, creating a diorama of the Last City in blue light. The Tower’s hammerhead shape was clearly visible, as was the Traveler in the distance. The City spread out within the shelter of the seventy-story walls, cluttered and busy, vehicles traveling the streets, monorails zipping along their lines.

“This is the Last City as we know it,” Peach said. “Children laugh and play in safety. At night, families sleep in their homes. Not against the walls, weapons in hand.”

“Not like my people,” Saint murmured, gazing around.

“These are your people,” Ambrose broke in. “Their descendants. In your time, the City is still being built. This is what it will look like. Several of my friends live there, in that block there. Oh, and here is my favorite restaurant.”

Saint gave him a silent look.

Ambrose faced him. “My point is, sir, your fight is not in vain. Look what you will accomplish in time.”

Saint gazed at the hologram for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “I can not do this anymore. I am so tired.”

Ambrose didn’t know what to say. Instead, he stepped up to the Titan and held out his shotgun. “At least take this. You have need.”

Saint-14 carefully took the Perfect Paradox and turned it over, examining it. Then he lifted it and sighted along the barrel. “Is a beautiful weapon. Thank you.”

Ambrose wanted to say something else. But suddenly he was dragged backward, the world stretching away into a blur. He seemed to see the Sundial’s pylons spinning in great circles, ripping him through time and space, back along his own timeline. He grabbed Peach and held her tight as Mercury spiraled away into sterile whiteness.


	12. Fireteam

Ambrose landed on his rear end on the floor of the Sundial, its arms spinning to a stop overhead. Outside was present-day Mercury, all desert with the stumps of trees showing the old terraforming. Osiris stood where Ambrose had left him, arms folded. “Well?”

“I found him,” Ambrose said, scrambling to his feet and rubbing his backside. “Pardon the ungainly entrance, but I was not expecting to be retrieved in such a fashion.”

Osiris dismissed this with an impatient gesture. “Zephyr Station. You found Saint-14 there?”

“Yes,” Ambrose replied. “I assisted him in staving off the Fallen and burying the deceased colonists.”

Osiris sighed and turned away. “My reflections have often seen that moment,” he said, more to himself than to the Guardian. “I have seen the timelines when you were there. You fought well. But your actions changed nothing. Saint-14 is still dead.”

Ambrose stood still, feeling as if Osiris had slapped him. “What was the point of sending me, then?”

“To find the point of his death,” Osiris said over his shoulder. “That is the point I cannot find, no matter how many reflections I send. You could not reach it, either.”

Ambrose felt very, very tired all of a sudden. “I returned his shotgun. He seemed to need a weapon.”

“You returned it?” Osiris said, turning. “But that means …” He held up a hand and produced a floating white matrix of Vex symbols. A set of tiny blocks appeared within. Osiris spun the blocks, rearranging their symbols and connections, as if working a small computer. His Ghost appeared and watched.

“Aha,” said Osiris. “By giving Saint-14 Perfect Paradox, you have created a time beacon. I may be able to track it to the point of his death. But I need to triangulate.” He spun the cubes. “Ah. Yes. Guardian, we need to find Saint-14’s Ghost.”

“His Ghost?” Ambrose said blankly. “Didn't it die with him in the Infinite Forest?”

Osiris’s Ghost, Sagira, flew forward. “We believe Saint sent his Ghost away, through a Vex gate. But we’re unsure where it may have come out.”

“I'll do more research and contact you,” Osiris said. He glanced at Ambrose. “Go home and get some rest, man. You look dead on your feet. The Corridors of Time exert untold pressure on mortals, even Guardians.”

Ambrose was thankful for the dismissal. He fled for his ship, weariness dragging at every muscle.

* * *

“You have fifty-three messages from your fireteam,” Peach said.

Ambrose had made it back to his apartment in the Tower. He was halfway through unbuckling the unfamiliar Dragon's Shadow armor, his movements clumsy with exhaustion. He couldn't wait to collapse in bed. It was two AM local time, and the Tower was dark and quiet.

“Why so many messages?” he said, locating a buckle. “Did someone die?”

“From the looks of these,” Peach said, “they think you did.”

“What gave them that idea?” Ambrose said, wrestling the vest over his head. 

“Apparently they saw a vision of you at the Solstice dance party,” Peach replied. “Possibly connected with our jaunt through the Corridors.”

“Send them a reply to tell them all is well,” Ambrose said, sitting to remove his boots. “I plan to sleep for at least twelve hours. Feel free to take the skeleton of the unknown Guardian to the Crypt of Heroes. I will be along to pay my respects in the morning.”

“Right,” said Peach. She watched her Guardian stretch out on his bed. He was snoring within five minutes. She emoted a smile at him, then phased through the door. She had lots to do.

* * *

“Ambrose! Good to see you,” Muriel said the following afternoon, pounding the Hunter on the back. 

He winced, as he always did when the tall Titan greeted him. “Hello, Muriel. Any word from Charon?”

The whole fireteam had been brought together by Charon, who had shepherded their Ghosts through the wilds until they located their Guardians. The team had gone through training together as new Guardians, and had worked together so well, they’d formed an official team.

“She’s currently combing Beijing, and she's doing fine,” Muriel replied, with the air of someone who answered this question a lot. “Where have you been? We saw some phantom version of you last night!”

“I was traveling the Corridors of Time at Osiris’s behest,” Ambrose replied, pulling off his cloak. The summer sun was roasting him beneath his gear. “It rather concerns me that you saw such an apparition. Things may not transpire so well on my next journey.”

“Come tell the team about it,” Muriel said. She led him to a table beneath an awning, where Nathan and Ariana were already waiting with cold drinks. They were a study in contrasts: the human Hunter and the Awoken warlock, one wearing shorts and a grimy shirt, the other in an immaculate sun dress. Nathan was drawing avidly in a notebook and Ariana was pretending not to watch.

“Hello, Ambrose!” Ariana said with too much warmth, rising and taking his hand. “Come sit by me. Tell us everything!”

Ambrose shot Nathan an apologetic look and made sure not to sit too close to Ariana. She was only this nice to Ambrose when she was trying to annoy Nathan. As Ambrose told them about his mission, he pretended not to see Nathan’s frown.

“And now I must somehow locate Saint-14’s Ghost,” Ambrose concluded. “I am uncertain where to begin. It is likely long dead, and dead Ghosts are collected by every sapient race in the system.”

Nathan flicked his hair out of his eyes and gestured with his pencil. “You said it went through a Vex gate, right? You need to talk to an expert on the Vex.”

“A Vex-pert?” said Ariana.

Nathan grinned. “A Vex-pert! Who do we know like that?”

“Beyond Osiris, himself?” Ambrose said, also grinning at the joke. “Not many around.”

“Hey,” Muriel said, snapping her fingers. “I know someone. She knows more about Vex than Osiris, I’ll bet.”

“I doubt it,” Ambrose said. “Who?”

Muriel pulled out her Ghost and displayed a set of coordinates.


	13. Favorite NPC

“Good morning, Failsafe,” said Ambrose.

“Greetings, Guardian!” said the super cheerful voice of the AI. She sounded like an overly-helpful telephone operator, except for when she switched personalities to her apathetic side. It was rumored that Failsafe had been alone in the wreckage of the Exodus Black for so many centuries, she had developed two personalities just to have someone to talk to.

Ambrose had flown out to the centaur Nessus and landed just beyond the wreckage of the Exodus Black, a colony ship that had crashed there during the collapse. The Vex had terraformed the planetoid, filling it with red-leafed trees and a nitrogen-rich atmosphere. They had killed the crew and passengers of the colony ship, leaving Failsafe alone for centuries, until she was rediscovered by Guardians. 

Now Ambrose climbed up into the intact portion of ship where the AI was housed, along with thousands of data cubes. 

“I’m Guardian Ambrose,” he said, bowing awkwardly to the computer core in the far wall. “This is my Ghost, Peach. I’ve come to ask your assistance.”

“My assistance?” Failsafe sounded flattered. “I will do my best to help you, Guardian Ambrose.” Her personality flipped. “The way I helped my crew when they all died.”

“That is …” Ambrose hesitated and cleared his throat. “Ah, most helpful. I'm looking for a dead Ghost.”

“Forty-six Ghosts have died on Nessus,” Failsafe said cheerfully. “One Ghost resurrected a Guardian from among my dead crew. But it has been two hundred twenty-one years and they have not returned.”

This was more information than Ambrose wanted. He almost asked who the Guardian was, but checked himself. He was here to try to save Saint-14, not collect gossip. “The Ghost I'm looking for will have come out of a Vex gate about ten years ago. It may have been hunted by Axis Vex.”

“Oh yes, I have a record of that Ghost,” Failsafe said. “We communicated for a short time before the Vex caught him. His name was Geppetto.” Her apathetic side came out. “But he's dead now.”

“Where is he located?” Ambrose asked eagerly, leaning on the railing between the ship’s flooring and the computer equipment.

“I will send you coordinates of his last known location,” Failsafe said, cheerful once more. “However, he may have been carried elsewhere.”

A flag appeared on the map in Ambrose’s helmet HUD. “Thank you,” the Hunter said. “Out of curiosity, what did the Ghost speak to you about?”

“Opening a gate so he might return to his Guardian,” Failsafe said. Her voice flipped. “But he didn't make it.”

“Right,” Ambrose said, and left the ship.

Failsafe’s flag was hard to locate. First, Ambrose wound up exploring an empty hillside. He and Peach couldn't find a trace of a Ghost anywhere. Then Failsafe said, “You are half a mile too high, Guardian Ambrose.”

This meant hunting for miles to find a cave entrance that led in the right direction. Nessus was honeycombed with passages, rooms, and cave systems the Vex had constructed for their nameless calculations. Ambrose fought his way through several gangs of the robots. 

“Why do you think they call them goblins?” he asked Peach, blasting one into vapor with his fusion rifle. “Seems like goblins should be small, hairy, green folks, not robots.”

“Why do they call those things harpies?” Peach retorted, highlighting one. It was a flying robot with three segments, like a shamrock, that opened and closed as it blasted them with lasers.

“Maybe they're female and prey on men?” Ambrose laughed. “There's also hydras and Minotaurs. Who named them? Minotaurs look nothing like a man with a bull’s head.”

“Maybe before the Collapse, the first people to make contact had a lot of imagination,” Peach suggested. “Vex are pretty frightening if you don't know them.”

Ambrose made his way down a corridor that was half rough stone and half carved bricks held up by data lattice. “I'd say they're more frightening on acquaintance.”

Failsafe’s flag was nearby, but off at an angle. Ambrose explored up and down the corridor, trying to find a way to reach it. Finally he found an alcove in the wall with a crack in it. He slid through this crack and found himself in a narrow avenue where the terraforming hadn't lined up correctly. Perhaps an earthquake had misaligned it. Bent double, the Hunter picked his way through the narrow passage, then had to climb up huge bricks like stair steps.

After what felt like miles, his back aching, Ambrose rounded a corner and entered a little subterranean room held up by data lattice pillars. He didn't need Failsafe’s flag to find the dead Ghost.

Like his Guardian, the Ghost had gone down fighting. He appeared to have transmatted Vex goblins through the walls and floor, because bits of them protruded from the stone everywhere. Several more goblins lay dead in a tangle where he had fused their parts together. But a goblin clutched the Ghost in a clawed hand, one finger pierced through the little glass eye.

Ambrose knelt and tugged the cold metal spike out of the Ghost’s eye. Then he pulled the Ghost away from the goblin. He held it up for Peach to examine. “Is this Geppetto?”

“Yes it is,” she said sadly, playing a scan beam over him. “He has a short message here. _Bury me with my Guardian, Saint-14. Glory to the Light_.”

Ambrose tucked the courageous little corpse into an empty ammo pouch at his belt. Sadness warred with hope inside him. Could it be possible to travel back and rescue Saint-14 before this happened? Before this Ghost fought its enemies to the death? 

“If I stop this Ghost from dying in the past,” he said aloud, “then how am I able to find it now?”

Failsafe had been eavesdropping. She replied, “Alternate timelines, Guardian Ambrose. You would move to an alternate timeline where the Ghost lived. If you do, please do not forget me.”

Ambrose grinned. “I could never forget you, Failsafe.”


	14. Favorite location

On the way back from Nessus, Ambrose said, “Peach, set our course for Beijing in Old China.”

Peach glanced at him from where she floated at the cockpit instrument panel. “Are we visiting Charon?”

Ambrose shrugged one shoulder. “I brought along extra supplies for her.”

“I wondered about that cargo,” Peach said. She emoted a smile. “I traveled with Charon for a long time, looking for you. She's very good to Ghosts.” She hesitated, then said, “Why visit her now?”

Ambrose drummed his fingers on the flight yoke. “Muriel and the others saw a vision of me … and I must travel the Corridors of Time once more … Call it a premonition, Peach. This may be the last time I see Charon.”

Peach spun her shell in an unsettled way, but said nothing until she had set the jumpship’s new heading. Then she burst out, “Please don't talk that way, Ambrose! Of course we’ll come back! You're tougher than any Vex!”

“Where did this come from?” Ambrose said quietly, touching his Dragon’s Shadow armored vest.

Peach glanced at it. “Just because that Guardian died in there doesn't mean you will.”

Ambrose didn't reply directly. Instead, he opened his mind to Peach over their neural link. She felt his uneasiness, the idea of his own time-image appearing to his fireteam mixed with the thought of the dead Guardian and the dead Saint-14, and of that Ghost in the goblin’s claws. He had no assurance of traversing the Corridors of Time successfully. He would be seeking a point that not even Osiris could find. Mingled with this was resignation, a melancholic acceptance.

“No,” Peach said fiercely, opening her shell in jolts with each syllable. “You. Will. Come. Back.”

Ambrose didn't look at her. He focused on his ship’s computer, instead. 

Neither of them spoke as they dropped out of near-lightspeed and winged toward Earth’s blue globe. Peach kept thinking of Geppetto and of all those Vex he had killed. She had an independent streak a mile wide, but having had a Guardian, she couldn't bear the thought of losing him and going back to a solitary life. Worse, she didn't think she was strong enough to fight Vex like that. She had always fled and hid from danger, never confronted it head on. Geppetto had been fierce--the Ghost of a Titan. He hadn't given up until the end.

The ship dropped toward the Asian continent and zeroed in on the ruins of Beijing. The area was riddled with sinkholes, and from high altitude it looked like asteroids had left craters across the landscape. Ambrose switched on the radio and said, “This is Guardian Ambrose seeking Guardian Charon. Do you copy?”

After a moment, a Ghost’s voice replied, “Read you loud and clear. Transmitting coordinates. Welcome to Beijing and watch your step.”

Ambrose landed in an old parking lot in the shadow of a factory, now half-collapsed from the ravages of the centuries and scavengers. As he climbed out of his cockpit, Charon stepped out of the ruins and sauntered toward him, one hand on her hip.

Charon had an Asian slant to her features, and her gleaming black hair was twisted up in a knot at the back of her head. She wore the tough pants and vest of a Hunter that hugged her figure and showed off her curves. Ambrose would never have guessed that she was actually a Titan by her gear. A Ghost floated at her shoulder in a black racing shell, quiet and watchful.

“Hello, Charon!” Ambrose said, shaking her hand. To his surprise she pulled him into a hug and pounded him on the back.

“Good to see you, Ambrose,” she said, beaming. “What brings you out here?”

“Supplies,” Ambrose said. He had Peach transmat a large box onto the concrete.

Charon opened it and looked through the contents approvingly. “All this food! All preserved for travel, too. Thanks very much! I've missed peanut butter.” She lifted the box as if it weighed nothing. “My ship’s out here. Walk with me?”

The two Guardians circled the factory and wound their way through the streets behind it, talking with the easy familiarity of good friends. Charon talked about the Ghosts she had met and the Guardians they had resurrected. “I hope to have found a whole fireteam by the end of the year. How about you? Having any adventures?”

Ambrose told her about Osiris and his mad quest to save Saint-14. “I'm not sure why I have to do this, other than I'm the one who located Saint’s traces in the Infinite Forest.”

Charon scrutinized his face, her dark eyes missing nothing. “You're going back, aren't you?”

He told her about finding Saint-14’s Ghost and how difficult it might be to find a passage through the Corridors of Time. He fell silent at that point as words failed him.

They reached Charon’s ship and she transmatted the supplies aboard. Then she and Ambrose sat on a low concrete wall and gazed out across the ruined city.

“You came to say goodbye,” Charon said softly, without looking at him.

Ambrose nodded. “If something goes wrong … I wanted to have seen you one last time. To say thank you. For guarding Peach, and for enabling her to resurrect me. It's been a good life, being a Guardian.”

“You sound like you're sure you’ll never come back,” said Charon, meeting his gaze. “Nothing is certain.”

“Better to assume the worst,” Ambrose replied. “If I survive this, it will be a pleasant surprise.”

They sat there in silence, watching the sun swing westward, casting long shadows behind the tallest buildings.

“If you can save Saint-14,” Charon said, “that will be a huge morale boost after losing Cayde-6.”

Ambrose nodded. He had resurrected after the Hunter Vanguard’s death, and had scrambled through his training any way he could. He’d felt the gloom and grief that still haunted the Vanguard.

“I suppose I'll be doing everyone a favor,” he said. “Assuming I survive the attempt.” He rested his hand on Charon’s small, strong one. “I wanted you to know how much I care for you, while I still have a chance.”

She looked at their hands, then up at his face. Her eyes were suddenly moist. “Why did you wait until the last minute, then?”

“I …” Ambrose stammered, suddenly aware that he had stepped into deep water. “I suppose … impending death rearranges priorities. I didn't want to face it with this undone, if that makes sense.”

Charon suddenly gripped his hand so hard that his bones creaked. “You'd better come back, you hear me?” A flicker of Light sparked in her eyes.

Ambrose took in her expression and realized what it meant. “Do you mean to say … you care for me, as well?”

“Yes, you idiot,” Charon said. “Don’t think I haven't noticed how you're always the one bringing me supplies and staying in touch. Muriel mentioned yesterday how you ask her all the time for news of me. I'm not good at relationships, all right? My last few didn't end well. I've tried not to … encourage you. But dammit, Ambrose.” She turned away and wiped her eyes. “If you go out there and die, I'm going to be so angry.”

Ambrose grinned because he’d lost control of his face. He wanted to leap to his feet and dance like a fiend, to yell and shout and sing. Instead, he sat there beside the girl he loved and grinned and felt like an idiot as she cried. He gingerly put an arm around her shoulders. “I had assumed that all affection was on my side of the equation. You have an effective poker face.”

“Yes, well,” Charon said, putting an arm around him, too. “The last poor sap who fell for me spent six months in a cage.”

On her other side, her Ghost said, “Hey now, it wasn't like that.”

“Wasn't it?” Charon said, glancing at him. “I'm not a good person to be in a relationship with. Too much Titan.”

“I haven't a clue what you mean,” said Ambrose, rubbing her shoulder. “You are exceedingly kind to these Ghosts. I've seen you care for them and protect them. Isn't the measure of a person’s character how they treat those weaker than themselves?”

“Shh,” Charon whispered. “You're going away, and this is making it worse.”

“All right, then,” Ambrose whispered, brushing her cheek with his lips. “If I do make it back, I'm coming for you.”

“You'd better,” Charon murmured.


	15. Vex

Time. Space. Inextricably linked. One affecting the others. Delicate possibilities playing across the higher dimensions like vines stretching between great trees of unchangeable events.

Here dwelt the Vex in their hierarchy, each class with a different function and focus. Always calculating the ideal future. Always calculating how to best opponents and enemies. Always trying to calculate the movements of Light and Darkness. The trees moved, throwing dappled shade across the possible and the probable, adding the delicate touches of change and chaos. Among them the Vex moved as gardeners, pruning, tending, guiding the delicate growth of the eons.

The Child called Saint-14 had been silenced but at great cost, the branch of his tree cut away. Light could not be simulated, only drained. Many risks had been taken and many futures lost to Saint-14, the connecting branches shattered and fallen away. The Axis Vex tore away that branch and cast it into the void, seeking to destroy it and erase it forever. But a branch filled with Light could not be so easily removed. Threads still connected to its tree, even as the trunk bled red sap.

What! The Light called Osiris built a paracausal machine that whispered and burrowed through the timelines. It pierced through the forest like a ravenous worm, gnawing through the trunks and branches, flinging itself between them on gossamer threads, ever seeking its nameless goal. The Axis Vex studied it and ambushed those who walked its pathways. Even here, they could not predict the Light. But they could thwart it, misdirect it, choke it off. Ever the Reflections of Osiris roamed in the trail of the worm, seeking the death moment of Saint-14, the triumph of the Axis. Always they hid that moment, buried it, pushing it out of the path of Osiris’s Reflections. He was but one mind while the Vex were many. He would never find the severed branch. He was the Light and they were the shadows that danced in its periphery.

What was this? A beacon was planted at an earlier time, altering the moment of Saint-14’s death. Alternate timelines spun off the severed branch, ripe with probability, messy as splattered fruit. The Axis descended upon them, paring them away, cleaning the splatter before it could attract the worm--

No! Light was coming, drawn to the beacon. The worm used the Sundial to tunnel toward the severed branch, leaping through the void. In panic the Axis fought to purge the futures, but it was too late. The Light found a stray seed of possibility and slipped into the moment, guided by that beacon.

The Axis conferred among themselves. This was an emergency. Saint-14’s death must not be undone. Too many timelines pivoted on it. The Martyr Mind must be prepared to drain the Light of two, not one. There was a 67 percent chance of success, even without the possibility of simulating the outcome.

The severed branch was returned to its tree, bound by the sweet, sticky sap of continuity. The Axis Vex descended upon it in the terrified fury of uprooted gods. The Light must not persist, must not spread its joyful chaos. The entire forest might be set ablaze by the smallest spark, therefore, the sparks must be quenched.


	16. Throw more grenades

Ambrose ran down the Corridors of Time, guided by his Ghost, hunted by the Axis Vex.

He had not missed the sterile whiteness of eternity, nor the echoing silence that swallowed every sound he made. He disliked the way light behaved in this place, devoid of color, as if something had gone wrong with his eyes. Each courtyard was different this time. Some had the same tree he had seen before, floating in its chunk of disembodied soil. But some had huge geometric shapes made of stone. Some had remnants of the graceful fungus trees that used to cover Mercury. Some had ruins of buildings on Earth. Every door was open in every courtyard. Ambrose navigated by a map Osiris had given him.

Osiris had spent hours studying Saint-14’s Ghost. He had taken it through the Sundial while Ambrose watched from outside. Sometimes, beneath the spinning pylons, there had been multiple copies of Osiris. Sometimes there had been only invading Vex. Sometimes there was something else, a half-seen horror of blackness, formless squirming shapes, and whispers. And once there had been a black pyramid with green lights along its base.

By the time Osiris emerged, Ambrose had stopped watching the Sundial. If he gazed into it any longer, he’d be too terrified to set foot inside.

“I have found a path, I think,” Osiris said. “Sagira is sending it to your Ghost. Look for these symbols and pass through those doors. It should take you to Saint-14’s last hours. I tried to go, myself, but the Vex have built safeguards against me. It will take time to dismantle them. But you … they cannot calculate your actions. Be unpredictable.”

“Yes sir,” Ambrose had replied, wondering how to be unpredictable when following a set path. “I'll do my best. How do I return, afterward?”

“I will fetch you once the timelines change,” said Osiris.

Now Ambrose was running, following Peach’s directions. “Next up is a squiggly thing like two snakes.”

“Over there?” Ambrose panted, ducking behind a pillar as a hail of bullets pared the face of the stone away.

“Yes, across the center,” Peach confirmed. She healed a bullet scratch in his left arm. “Blast these Vex. Why can't they leave us alone?”

Ambrose summoned a Light grenade and threw it into the middle of a squad of goblins stalking toward him. The explosion blew them to pieces and tore a respectable crater in the floor.

This provided enough breathing space for Ambrose to dash for the next doorway. Once through, he was back in the echoing whiteness between worlds, running down his own timeline toward a pyramid-shaped door in the distance.

“What next?” he called to Peach.

“That was the last symbol,” she replied in his head. “Next should be--”

They passed through the pyramid and emerged inside the Infinite Forest. Geometric shapes crackled around them like lightning as the simulation tried to account for their sudden presence. A landscape sprang into being around them, chunks loading in. Dark rocks, eroded soil, a cold sky with a dark, dead sun. 

“Oh look,” Ambrose panted. “The simulated bad future that the Vex are so bloody fond of.”

“I didn't like it the first time we were here,” Peach muttered. “I'm detecting movement over there. I think it's Saint-14. I'm picking up Geppetto’s tag. Wow, it's really strange seeing him alive.”

Ambrose paused a moment to reload his rifle, then picked his way toward the other Guardian, keeping under cover of tumbled boulders and toppled pillars. His heart pounded with fresh adrenaline. He’d reached the doomed Titan, but was he in time?

He rounded a corner and saw Saint, also sheltering behind a boulder, his back to Ambrose. He was reloading the Perfect Paradox shotgun. Everywhere were scattered the limbs and bodies of robots, the white milk of their lifeblood staining the soil. Ambrose could almost smell the chemical stench of it through his helmet.

“Hoi there, Saint!” he called, raising a hand.

The Titan jerked around, raising his rifle by reflex. Then he lowered it, straightening. His relieved grin was evident in his voice. “Guardian Ambrose? What a surprise to see you here.”

Ambrose dashed forward and joined him in his hiding place. More Vex were amassing on the next hilltop, but had not yet stormed the Guardian’s hiding place.

Saint shook his hand vigorously. “You are most welcome! This battle is nearly over, win or lose. See that hydra up there? Is called the Martyr Mind. It drained my Light.” He held out a hand as if trying to summon a grenade, but nothing happened. “I was preparing to send my Ghost away.”

“Don't do that,” Ambrose said. “I found him on the other side. He won't make it.”

“Right.” Saint bowed his head for a moment, as if listening to the protests of his friend. “Well then. You and I will fight together. The Lord sent you in the nick of time, eh?”

“Actually, it was Osiris,” Ambrose said.

Saint-14 guffawed and slapped his thigh. “Osiris! He always cause trouble for me. Tell him I owe him broken nose for running to Infinite Forest.” He lifted his shotgun and ratcheted a shell. “Let us fight, friend. Throw grenade for me. Lots of grenade.”

“All I can manage,” Ambrose promised.


	17. Boss fight

Already the Vex were advancing, several hundred strong. All of them were Axis Vex, their bodies designed differently than the other divisions: sleeker, stronger, more deadly. Goblins walked in front, slap rifles pouring a hail of bullets upon the Guardians’ location. Behind them walked the Minotaurs with their rocket launchers, and behind them lurked the monstrous form of the Martyr Mind.

Ambrose charged a grenade in both hands. Saint-14 chuckled at the sight and motioned him out of hiding. Ambrose drew on the Light to wrap himself in shadows, becoming well-nigh invisible. Then he bolted into the open and threw the grenades, one after the other.

The first one detonated on the right flank of the advancing goblins, destroying them and throwing them into one another. The second grenade flew over their heads and dropped into the ranks of the Minotaurs. Their shields flared to life in bright purple curtains, then failed. Two Minotaurs spasmed and died as their radiolaria cells ruptured.

Ambrose reached the cover of another boulder and had Peach transmat his auto rifle into his hands. He hosed down the Vex goblins at waist level, breaching their radiolaria cells en masse. The robots shrieked and died.

“You are amazing!” Saint-14 cheered, firing his shotgun from the hip and destroying a robot with each blast. “I have not seen you in years, friend, yet you are strong.”

“It’s only been a few days for me,” said Ambrose, concentrating fire on a Minotaur to break its shield. “How long has it been for you?”

“Many years,” Saint-14 replied. “You give me hope, Guardian. I return to Earth, join Pilgrim Guard. Bring people to Last City. I spend years building it. Meet Osiris. You never think he could be a good friend, yes? But he good friend.”

“Isn’t he rather strange?” Ambrose asked, switching to a fusion rifle and trying it on the Martyr Mind. Its shields deflected the shot.

“Strange? Yes,” Saint replied, casually headbutting a goblin in the middle and punching the head off another. “But that is warlocks for you. All strange in their own ways. Does not make them bad people.” The warmth of a smile entered his voice. “Hunters strange, also! But good people, yes?”

Ambrose laughed. “I could say the same for Titans.” He slipped into the shadows again and darted toward the Martyr Mind, drawing his knives.

“Titans always good people,” Saint replied, striding out of cover and blasting through a cluster of goblins to reach a lurking hobgoblin.

The Martyr Mind saw Ambrose coming. It disappeared and teleported to Saint-14’s position. A cage of white lattice appeared around him, and Saint was lifted off the ground, held in place by invisible force. He grunted and strained, trying to break free.

The Martyr Mind moved this cage up the hill to where a node flashed a beam of bright energy into a receiver plate above it. This node fed energy into the cage, holding Saint prisoner.

“Are you all right?” Ambrose called.

“I am unharmed, my friend!” Saint called back. “But this blasted Martyr Mind has me trapped! Kill it for me!”

Ambrose had to dive for cover as a Minotaur pelted his position with rockets. “Peach,” he thought, “what are the Mind’s defenses?”

A wire frame model of the Mind’s centipede body appeared in the corner of his HUD. “It appears to have the rotating shields typical of the Hydra-class Vex,” Peach replied. “The weak points appear every forty-five degrees. This Mind appears to be charged with Light, so keep your distance. It could be very dangerous.”

“Right,” Ambrose thought. He swapped to his fusion rifle again, waited until the gap in the shields rotated into view, then fired through it at the Mind. The rifle burned a black streak up the robot’s segments, boiling away the metal exterior in smoke and vapor. The Mind disappeared in a flash of white code symbols.

It reappeared five feet above Ambrose’s head. He immediately sprang out from under it and ran, but a squadron of goblins appeared out of the simulation. He slid into their midst, keeping low to avoid their slap rifles. “Peach! Sword!”

His Ghost transmatted his Light-infused blade into his hand. Ambrose laughed as he jumped to his feet. He laid into the robots like a whirlwind.

Saint-14 laughed from his prison as Vex parts flew twenty feet into the air. “Save some Vex for me, friend! I'm trapped, not dead!”

“Just cleaning a few of them out,” Ambrose called as he punched through the squadron, his cloak and armored vest smoking. “There's plenty left over!” He paused to wipe blood from the hilt of his sword, where a cut on his upper arm was making his grip slippery. Then he charged back into battle as his Ghost healed him. This time, his target was that Martyr Mind. He ducked between its shields and stabbed his sword into the wound he had already opened in its carapace.

The robot screamed and jerked away, ripping the sword out of his hand. The backside of the shield clipped Ambrose and knocked him down. The impact stunned him for a second. Before he could regain his senses, the Mind constructed a rapid lattice trap around him, too. Ambrose was lifted off the ground with the sensation of iron bands closing around his limbs and throat. He struggled, but there was nothing there. He was held immobile in the simulated reality, itself. Worse was a terrible cold sensation, like the nausea just before vomiting. The machine was stripping away his Light.

But the Mind had taken its attention off Saint-14. The Titan struggled and burst through the lattice around him. “Ha!” he exclaimed as he hit the ground. “It is draining your Light, but it forgot to drain mine!” He suddenly blazed with purple Void Light and a shield appeared on his arm. “Time to die!”

Saint-14 leaped into the air, using Light to propel himself in an arc like a missile. He came down on the Martyr Mind like a falling tank, shield-first. The robot exploded in a flash and boom, its dying wail like an alarm. The other Vex vanished. The cage disappeared and Ambrose dropped to the ground.

Saint walked up and shook Ambrose’s hand, a swift, firm grasp. “Thank you, my friend.”

“No, thank you,” Ambrose replied, grinning. “I think we’ve just altered history. You were supposed to die at this point. In fact, you died before I was resurrected.”

“Then Osiris has a lot to answer for,” Saint replied. “It is a long walk back to the gate from here, but my Ghost knows the way. Shall we go together?”

“Osiris should recall me any minute,” Ambrose said. “I'll open the gate for you.”

“Yes, do that,” Saint said. He lifted his shotgun and reloaded it from synth as more Vex materialized in the distance.

Peach said over their radios, “But it may take years to walk back to the gate, Saint?”

The Titan lifted his shotgun in salute. “What is a few more years of fighting Vex?”

He lifted his gun just as the tell-tale pressure dragged at Ambrose’s body. He relaxed into it and let the Sundial recall him through time and space.


	18. Killed by the Architects

Ambrose landed in the blank whiteness of the Corridors of Time. No Sundial, no Mercury, no Osiris. He managed to keep his feet this time, although he staggered on the glassy floor. “Uh,” he said, turning in place. “Peach, where are we?”

A single triangle doorway waited in the distance, draped in the shattered metal fragments of reality. It looked like a dozen other doors they had passed through already.

“That was the Sundial that brought us here,” Peach said, troubled. “But something interfered. We dropped back into the Corridors of Time.”

Ambrose stood still, listening. For a second, the echo of an echo touched his ears--a man’s voice speaking. “I heard Osiris,” he whispered. He and Peach waited, listening intently. Deep silence surrounded them. It was different from the silences found on Earth, made simply by lack of sound. On Earth, energy still flowed from the sun’s radiation and the Earth’s core. Here there was not even the vibration of atoms. It was the absence of sound, the absence of life. It began to weigh on Ambrose’s mind after a while. He began to long to shout or stamp his feet or otherwise make noise, just to break that timeless stillness.

“Let's go,” he said at last, and his low voice was like a shout.

He set off toward the doorway, even the tap of his footsteps seeming to be too loud. He strained his ears for a sound, for that hint of Osiris’s voice again. Had the Sundial broken down? What if Ambrose was stranded here forever, just like that dead Guardian whose vest he wore? But no, surely there had to be an exit. This place had many exits into many time periods.

He entered a courtyard. For a second he glimpsed the usual tree in its floating chunk of soil. Then reality blinked like a switched channel on a television.

Light. Color. Sound. People dancing. Ambrose was back in the Tower. Golden Solstice lanterns hung everywhere. Music blasted, and Guardians were dancing and shouting to each other.

“What is this?” Ambrose exclaimed to Peach. “Are we home?”

“Uh oh,” Peach said, barely audible over the music. “Quick, make a light construct knife and play with it.”

“Oh no.” Ambrose obeyed. He used a fraction of his Light to form the shape of a knife, then tossed it up and down, catching it by the handle, then the blade. It was a signal.

Muriel approached, her height giving her away even in casual clothes. Ambrose watched her out of the corner of his eye. This wasn't real, was it? He was a vision for her, bleeding through the timeline, just as his fireteam had seen. This was why they'd thought he was dead.

“Ambrose, there you are,” she said. Her hand raised to his shoulder. And passed straight through it. But Ambrose felt it as a burst of warmth, like Light. He flinched and looked at her.

All at once the vision faded. But where Muriel had been standing was a Vex hobgoblin--a huge one that towered over him. It was so close that he could see the lenses turning inside its eye as it studied him. One of its clawed hands rested on his shoulder, the claws slowly tightening.

Ambrose ripped himself out of its grasp with a gasp. He drew his knife and stabbed at the hobgoblin by reflex, but it parried the blow with its metal forearm.

“Run!” Peach cried. “It’s an Axis Lord!”

The Hunter bolted across the courtyard. Every gate was open, each one marked with a symbol. “Which way?”

“I'll try to use a previous route,” Peach replied. “Take the molecule-shaped one.”

Behind him, the Axis Lord spoke, its voice a garbled series of words and beeps. But when Ambrose looked back, it had vanished.

He fled along his own timeline, following Peach’s instructions, taking branch after branch. Each courtyard was empty, but if he hesitated too long, the Axis Lord appeared out of nowhere and softly stalked up behind him, one hand outstretched. He began to dread the sight of it. His weapons left no impression on the steel body, not even his fusion rifle.

“Why is it different this time?” Peach said in his head. “That was the sixth gate, but we’ve gotten nowhere. Is that Axis Lord screwing with us?”

“Revenge, probably,” Ambrose said, pausing to rest just outside the gate to a courtyard. “I saved Saint-14. By Vex logic, someone still has to die.”

“Well, it won't be you,” Peach said savagely.

Ambrose stepped through the gate and entered a courtyard he’d never seen before. This was a high vaulted place with no other gates. In the center was a piece of ground with broken concrete and weeds growing in the cracks. In the center was a great stone coffin. A plaque rested against it.

Ambrose stood still, staring at that coffin. A shudder of foreboding passed through him, and he began to sweat beneath his armor. “Peach,” he whispered. “Who--whose grave is this?”

“I can't read the inscription from here,” Peach whispered. “Move closer.”

“I don't want to.” Ambrose edged toward the coffin a step at a time. The cold dread inside him grew stronger. He glanced at the floor, checking his footing, and saw the ceiling reflected beneath him. Engraved on it were five symbols. But when he looked at the actual ceiling, it was a white featureless light.

“Peach, record that,” he said, pointing at the floor. “It might be our way out.”

She captured a snapshot. “Good,” she said. “I don't want to go any closer to the coffin. It feels … heavy. Like a pyramid.”

Ambrose took one more step. Reality slipped out from under him. The coffin vanished and he was back in the corridors. 

The Axis Lord was standing behind him, both cold hands weighing on his shoulders. It was whispering.

Ambrose wrenched away from it and ran, heart pounding so hard he thought it might choke him. He plunged through a gate and entered the courtyard with the tree. But it wasn't a courtyard. It was Beijing, the ruined buildings all around. Charon waited for him in the distance, one hand on the curve of her hip. She smiled and waved.

“It's another fake,” Peach said. “Turn left.”

As soon as he did, the vision blinked away and he was back in the courtyard. Where Charon had been standing was the Axis Lord, waiting for him, one hand upraised. Ambrose’s heart lurched in fresh panic. He dove through the gate Peach marked.

The robot hounded him through gate after gate. It never attacked him--it only invaded his personal space to lay its hands on him. This was so unlike any other Vex behavior, so horrifying and calculated, that Ambrose began lashing out with his sword as soon as he passed through any gate.

But there was the vaulted room with the coffin. He found it a second time. And a third. He could never reach the coffin, but always the floor showed a different set of symbols. 

And always he blinked back out into the corridors somewhere, and always that giant hobgoblin was standing behind him with its hands on his shoulders.

“Ambrose,” Peach’s voice shook. “It's flagged as an Architect. It's building this place around us. And … and I think it's going to kill us.”

The Axis Lord softly walked up behind Ambrose. He ran again, but would it do any good? He was tiring. His brain was growing fuzzy with the fatigue of so much fear. The corridors and courtyards were blurring together in his mind. And always his timeline stretched before and behind him. Disconcertingly, the timeline seemed to end abruptly only a little way ahead of him.

He turned a corner and there was the Axis Lord. He doubled back and ran from it. Or was he running from it? He might also be walking beside it through a forest of huge trees. It held his hand in its huge one. It guided him down the corridors and through gates. Everything was dappled with sunlight and shade, but there were cobwebs in the corners. 

Still Ambrose ran. But Ambrose also walked. He walked ran skipped sang alongside the Axis Lord. It sang, too. After a while, he understood the words.

“Tick tock says the clock,

It's time to go to bed.”

Ambrose didn't remember seeing the coffin, but somehow he was lying inside it, resting on cushions that felt so good to his tired body. Somewhere he was still running. Somewhere his Light flashed as he fought. 

He looked up at the Axis Lord as it lifted the stone coffin lid in both hands.

Somewhere he was screaming.

“Turn the key in the lock,

And now you are dead.”

The coffin lid closed over his face.


	19. Fallen Comrade

Somewhere Ambrose lay dead, his face turned hopelessly toward the gate, looking for help that would never come.

Somewhere his Ghost tried to find the real version, Ambrose Prime, and not the reflections scattered across the Corridors of Time.

And somewhere, Ambrose struggled to lift the stone lid of the coffin. But he was flat on his back and had no leverage. “Help!” he cried, his voice muffled by the stone. But he was buried deep in black silence, under the roots of the trees that twisted and leeched life from the dead that lay beneath them. The Axis Lords made certain that no one would ever know what became of Guardian Ambrose.

Time passed

Time stood still

Eternity stretched on and stood still and the trees grew, unchecked

And then unbearable brightness, shattering stone, violent impact and breaking.

Ambrose fell through nothing to crash upon the white glassy floor of the Corridors of Time. He gasped air into lungs that had not drawn breath in a nameless age. He squinted against the brilliance to see a figure standing over him.

“Ah, I have found you,” said a familiar Russian-accented voice. “The Vex had buried you, but you were not quite dead, yes?”

“Saint-14?” Ambrose said in disbelief, crawling to his feet. “But--you were in the Infinite Forest.”

“So were you,” Saint laughed. “I confess, I did not travel quite as cleanly as you did, my friend! This is why the Vex, they not like me.”

A ragged hole had been torn in the whiteness of the Corridors of Time. Beyond it was the Infinite Forest in its simulated ruined glory, the false sunlight shining yellow across the bricks. The Axis Lord lay in shattered pieces across the glassy floor, its eye gone dark. And nearest at hand, the stone coffin had been tipped onto its side, the stone lid broken in pieces.

Peach flew to Ambrose, spinning her shell in delight. “Ambrose! You're the right one! They split you up and killed your copies, but only one of you had your soul. Are you all right?” She opened her shell and pulsed Light into him, driving away the fatigue and fog that had plagued his brain.

“Thank you, Peach,” Ambrose said, cupping a hand beneath her. “You are a sight for sore eyes. I dreamed all those deaths. It was dreadful.” He turned to Saint-14 and shook his hand. “And thank you, sir. I would have been lost forever if not for you.”

“You might say we owe each other,” Saint said. “Come with me. Osiris contacted my Ghost and sent a map. The Cabal ate his precious Sundial and stranded you here.” He shook his head. “That Osiris. Big ideas, but his computers never work.”

“Ate the Sundial?” Ambrose said blankly. “But how did you get here?”

Saint thumped a fist into his breastplate. “Faith lead me to you. The Lord lead me through the Light. Show me how to break the Vex simulation.” He held out a hand and summoned his own Ghost. “And now, we go home. Cayde-6 owes me money. With the interest, I will be a very rich man!”

* * *


	20. Homecoming

Ambrose and Saint-14 traveled and battled together for a long time, navigating back through the Infinite Forest. The simulation was less hazardous than the Corridors of Time. They became good friends and laughed as time passed and the Vex died, frustrated, beneath their Light.

“Explain the ribbons, sir,” Ambrose said one day. “You had none when we first met.”

“Ah, these,” Saint-14 said, holding out his left arm. A strip of purple fabric was wrapped around his gauntlet. Others were woven across his breastplate or fluttered from his belt. “I wear one for every person I save. They tie them to my armor. As fabric rotted away, I replace with ribbon. I remember every person.” He stood in silence a moment, fingering a ribbon that hung from his shoulder pauldron. “That day we meet on Mercury … I had lost hope. Lost faith. If Christ truly send me to guard people with Light, why I fail? Then you come. Show me that my fighting not in vain. The City become big and beautiful. The people, they live.” He clenched a fist. “So I resolve to fight. I did fight for many years. They want to make me Vanguard Commander.” He chuckled and shook his head. “What a mess that would be. I recommend Zavala instead.”

“I'm honored to have had such an impact,” said Ambrose. “I'm a new Guardian, myself. It's only been a few years since I was resurrected. I'm … a mediocre Hunter, you might say. Middle ranked on my fireteam. Mid range accuracy on my kill tracker. My Ghost … disliked me for some time. The only thing I've done of note has been to find a new enemy entering the system near Neptune.”

Saint’s head whipped toward him like a dog that had spotted a squirrel. “When?”

“The day I came to find you,” Ambrose replied. “Having you back from the dead will be just what the Vanguard needs to bolster resolve.”

Saint rubbed his chin guard for a moment. “Well. I do what I can, but … am only one man. I need Guardians. Good Guardians. Good fighters with stout hearts and strong Light. How many are there now?”

They walked on, absently fighting Vex and talking statistics and strategy. Ambrose mentioned Charon and her flock of Ghosts.

“Ah, that is a good tradition,” Saint said with a laugh, kicking a goblin off a ledge. “Andal Brask was found like that. Guardian protect his Ghost. What is this Charon like? Hunter?”

“Titan,” said Ambrose. “Dresses like a Hunter. She says that Fallen laugh at her until she summons her hammer.”

“I would like to meet this lady Titan,” Saint said, chuckling. “But you are very fond of her already, yes?”

Ambrose nodded. “She's a lovely person.”

Saint looked hard at him, hearing the restrained affection in his voice. After a moment, he said, “Good. Do not wait, Ambrose. Marry her and love her. If new enemies come, may not be much time left. One thing I learn--life is short and regrets last long, long time. Even for Guardians.”

Ambrose nodded, glad that his helmet hid the heat creeping into his cheeks.

* * *

They continued traveling and battling, leaving a path of destruction through the Infinite Forest. When they finally reached the gate, Osiris was there to open it for them. Saint-14 dealt with a last Minotaur that followed them out, hoping to drag him back inside. Then Osiris, Saint-14, and Ambrose returned to the Lighthouse for a conference.

“My old friend has returned,” said Osiris. He had removed the cloth across his face at last, revealing an old man with lines of worry etched between his nose and mouth. But his smile relaxed those lines as he looked at Saint. “At last, I have absolved myself of the guilt of your death.”

“I owe you a broken nose for that, Osiris,” Saint said with mock ferocity. “I come to find you and you have hidden yourself inside maze.”

“It was not my intent,” Osiris said. He turned to Ambrose. “You have seen what is coming--the black pyramid ships. They bring Darkness such as Earth has not seen since the Collapse. The Traveler’s awakening has brought it here, and it is up to us to strengthen our Light in preparation. I want to restart the Trials of Osiris. Combat training for the most elite of fighters. But I have no time to spend on the administrative side. Saint, I’d be honored if you would run it in my place.”

Saint laughed and clapped his hands. “You see what he does!” he roared, turning to Ambrose. “I have not had time to wash the Vex milk from my armor, and already he has job for me!”

Ambrose grinned, watching the interplay between these two old friends.

Saint turned to Osiris. “Of course I will run Trials, since you ask nicely.” The Titan turned to Ambrose. “And you will take me through the City. I want to see what become of my … time investment.”

Osiris laughed unexpectedly, startling both of them. The warlock pounded Saint on the back. “It is good to see you again, my friend. I’ve forgotten how you brighten the world around you.”

“Light is good for everyone,” Saint-14 replied.

* * *

Several days later, Ambrose and Saint-14 went exploring in the Last City.

They walked the neighborhoods and shopping districts, rode the monorails, and watched children playing at the parks. Saint-14 was in constant delight and awe, exclaiming and pointing like any new arrival from the wilderness. Ambrose took him to his favorite restaurant for lunch, which was reputed to serve the best pho in the City. Saint-14 had not had an opportunity to eat food in many years, relying on the Light to sustain him in the Infinite Forest, and proclaimed it the best thing he’d ever eaten.

That afternoon, as they wandered through a little open-air market, Ambrose pensively stopped beside a stall selling textiles in various bright colors. After a few minutes, he left with a strip of purple ribbon, which he offered to Saint-14. “I owe you one of these.”

Saint-14 ran his finger along its satin length. “But … you are Guardian. I do not think it counts.”

“You saved my life,” said Ambrose. “You said that people whose lives you saved would tie cloth onto your armor in memorial. Allow me this. You saved me from many deaths.”

Saint relented. “I understand, then. Here, loop it through this buckle on my shoulder.”

Ambrose tied it to the top buckle of Saint’s breastplate. It was the newest ribbon of them all, vibrant purple against the faded violets of the others. They walked on in silence, Saint’s ribbons blowing in the breeze. 

But after a moment, Saint halted and doubled back, leaving Ambrose waiting on the sidewalk. After a moment he returned, carrying another violet ribbon. “Here,” he said, handing it to Ambrose. “Let us start your collection also. You save my life.”

Ambrose solemnly tied it to the strap holding on his leather vest. “I don’t know if I can save as many people as you have.”

“One life at a time,” Saint-14 replied. “Does not matter who or where. Every life precious. Every life matters. One day, you wear as many ribbons as me.”

Ambrose smiled.

The end


End file.
